A couple of years ago a friend gave me a book with the odd title It's not the Big that Eat the Small, but the Fast that Eat the Slow, by Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton. If the title isn't enough, there's a sub-title to add meaning: How to Use Speed as a Competitive Tool in Business. The whole idea of the little book grabbed my limited attention span because it signaled a paradigm shift in the culture. In a world that operates at the speed of thought, the size of the organization no longer provides the winning edge. No, today it is speed. Life is about velocity.
OK, we don't need to debate the merits of their assumptions. In my world I already know most churches are orchestrated to slow. The dis-connect being experienced by many local congregations is more a matter of speed than style. By the time ideas or opportunities for mission work through grid-locked committees the needs have been met or the open doors have closed. Shucks, kids, missed again!
But, let's move in another direction. Let's talk about 24/7 speed, the pace of life for most humans these days. I mean, they don't call it a rat race for nothing. It's a real live treadmill spinning at the fastest setting. Involvements are at a peak and most people are jetting from obligation to obligation at world pace speed. Even on days off it's life on the LA Freeway, break-neck, bumper-to-bumper motion. It's no longer a jungle out there or survival of the fittest. It's an oval track and survival of the fastest.
Some of us try to manage the velocity with our personal set of brakes. Tap the brakes and the vehicle slows down. Trouble is, in this kind of traffic, you'll get run over if you slow even a nano-MPH. Pay attention to your local arteries in and out of the city at high traffic times. Slowing down only works if everyone does it! If you're the only one, all the brakes will do in get you rear-ended. Maybe even create one of those horrible chain reactions crashes that certainly inconveniences every one, and may result in casualties. So, the brakes may no be the best management tool.
Then, again, there's the steering wheel! Once in a while we just need to exit the daily grind and take a detour. Watch a good movie. Read a good book. Horror of horrors, stay home for a day, play with the kids in the back yard, eat lunch under a tree, watch the world go by from the porch. The steering wheel in this instance is simply your control over where you go, at what speed you go there, and who manages your down time.
Harriet and I usually do Friday nights together, and lay low on Saturdays, except of course during football season, when we take in a Citadel or CSU home game. Living in a condo we're out of the yard-of-the-month club and I'm not handy enough for too many of the honey-do things. Still, they are usually times out of traffic flow do we can take a breath, coast a little, ease back on the throttle somewhat.
Early on, our parents taught us not to do anything on Saturday that would keep us from church on Sundays. I'm grateful for that value system and know the personal joys and the encouragement that comes when we're with our church family. Even more, however, keeping Sunday in mind helped us fuel the pace of the speed week ahead.
So, it's Saturday. Let up on the accelerator, steer to the side, and get out of the traffic for a few hours.
You know. Stop and smell the coffee.